A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

This book, which builds on the author’s work for a high-impact DEMOS report
(substantially developed and extended), debunks the myth of the State as a large
bureaucratic organization that can at best facilitate the creative innovation
which happens in the dynamic private sector. Analysing various case studies of
innovation-led growth, in particular examples from Silicon Valley – from the
Internet to the technologies behind the iPhone – it describes the opposite
situation, whereby the private sector only finds the courage to invest after the
entrepreneurial State has made the high-risk investments. It argues that in the
history of modern capitalism – and today in what might soon become the ‘green’
revolution – the State has not only fixed market failures but also shaped and
created markets, actively investing in new technologies and sectors that private
investors only later find the courage to move into.

Though generally libertarian I don't necessarily disagree. After all that is what a government supported X-Prize foundation would do.

On the other hand since, at least in current western societies, the state spends around 40% of national income it would be astonishing if there weren't some instances of it creating innovation. If it were to be shown to play more than 40% of the role in innovation, or directly responsible for more than 40% of inventions that would be an achievement.

And I suspect, with sufficient investment in X-Prizes it would.

The DARPA road prize is one such; Christopher Columbus was state funded. I have previously dicussed how the WW2 American building of industries capable of producing aircraft, cars, radios and even ships in hitherto unseen numbers meant that the industrial base for a post war boom existed.

The space programme has been almost entirely state funded and shown both the strength and weakness of being so. Because it was state funded it was possible to throw money at the problem. Because it was state funded it quickly became fixated on one method, ignoring the far greater possibilities available from the Orion programme. Probably most important of all, because it was state run it made little or no concessions to doing it inexpensively and commercially and commercial industry is only now starting to reinvent space development. Indeed to some extent, just because government took control, there have been legal and semi-legal restrictions in America and Britain which prevented development of a commercial space industry.

And yet governments DO have immense resources they can put into new industries before they exist. In theory a government with perfect understanding of new technology needs would create the optimum new technology. But the whole failure of central planned socialism was because governments don't and can't have that perfect knowledge. As Hayek among others (even Trotsky) have pointed out

The best knowledge of an industry is likely to be among those who have made their careers in that industry (and certainly not politicians if they only studied PPE and take advice from people who boast of not understanding economics) and the most diligent in making sure resources are used efficiently are investors who own the resources (and certainly not politicians who are likely to make decisions on how they will play to their own constituency/special interest group). As Hayek pointed out.

I did send Tim's contribution to the Guardian writer I had been in correspondence with over her article claiming X-prizes weren't that economically useful but she replied that she didn't really understand it because she didn't understand economics.

Friday, August 09, 2013

Some time ago I sent an FoI Act query to the BBC about the public admission by Brian Taylor that the BBC maintained a strong political bias against UKIP and whether the BBC as an organisation (or Brian himself since it also went to him) wished to retract, clarify or otherwise alter their position. They didn't:

Dear Mr Craig Freedom of Information request – RFI20131011

Thank you for your request to the BBC of 12 July, seeking the following information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000:

A few weeks ago I was at a "Brian's Big Debate" in which I said that the BBC provide far less airtime to UKIP spokespeople than our standing in the polls warrants and that the BBC was thereby failing to live up to its legal Charter duty of "balance". He forcefully replied that the BBC select for coverage on the basis of elected Parliamentary representation (though I assume he meant purely the Holyrood and Westminster Parliaments & for programmes not originating in Scotland, purely the Westminster parliament As you may know UKIP is the 2nd party, currently, in the EU Parliament, the only UK body in which results are proportional to voters wishes so I assume that has never paid any part in your calculations .In the most recent council elections all 3 main parties posted within 6% of each other but presumably those elections don't count towards your formula either. At the time Mr Taylor cut off any further debate on that subject.

However it is clear from what he said that far from this being a denial of bias it is an open official admission of it. That you do indeed quite deliberately censor coverageaccording to some formula, ignoring the interest of voters, who are your customers and from whom you demand a licence fee not varied according to electoral representation. For example UKIP is clearly among the main 3 parties in polls for UK coverage and at 8-9% regularly in Scotland, also outpo9lling the LDs & Greens, yet UKIP's coverage is well under 1% of UK, let alone Scotland, making the BBC mathematically at least 95% corrupt.

Not, in principle, different from the way broadcasters in the old USSR used to limit news coverage to what leaders of the elected party wanted ignoring both facts (in the way the BBC openly censor dissent and lie to promote the evidence free catastrophic global warming scare) and what their listeners might have wanted (granted more difficult to measure there).

Doubtless if you wish to retract this admission of censorship you will let me know, with full details. I would like to ask, under the Freedom of Information Act, what that mathematical formula is and when it came into effect? For example when the SDP was formed, or even before, it was not censored from the airwaves on the grounds that zero people had been elected under their standard. Since this is entirely an editorial matter the exception of protecting journalistic sources, regularly used by the BBC, cannot be applicable to the formula.

A further point is that pure amounts of coverage do not reflect the attitude applied. For example most interviews with UKIP seem to ignore policies (such as our economic policies which, as you know, could get us out of recession very quickly if the ruling parties wished) in favour of some variety of "some people say you are racists, how do you answer them". If unbiased you must usually open interviews with Tory/Labour/LibDems with a variant of "Some people say yours are a party of war criminals and produce unrefuted evidence for it" or greet Green representatives with "Some people say that the green movement has killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined and can prove it".

Again, under the Freedom of Information Act I would like to request examples of when this has been done - mathematically the BBC must have tens of thousands of examples, though I confess to never once having heard one.
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The information you have requested is excluded from the Act because it is held for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature.’ The BBC is therefore not obliged to provide this information to you and will not be doing so on this occasion. Part VI of Schedule 1 to FOIA provides that information held by the BBC and the other public service broadcasters is only covered by the Act if it is held for ‘purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature”. The BBC is not required to supply information held for the purposes of creating the BBC’s output or information that supports and is closely associated with these creative activities.....

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Well I already knew there was a journalistic out and that the BBC use it even to prevent them answering the number of times the BNP have been on Question Time.

However "not obliged" to answer is completely different from being obliged not to answer. So their refusal to deny being totalitarian censors is a deliberate premeditated decision.

In legal affairs courts are required to construe any ambiguity in a document against the drafter and thus this clear refusal to deny being corrupt totalitarian propagandists can only be seen, after Brian Taylor's admission of totalitarian censorship, as a deliberate confirmation of that.

The Formula
We can make a go of reverse engineering the formula, based on results.

We also know that the BBC have no slightest compunction about lying as per their claim that UKIP are deliberately refusing to engage in debate on their policies. Indeed from this it proves that the BBC are committed not only to lying but going further. A simple lie is a denial of the truth. The BBC officially go far further not merely denying the truth but asserting the exact 180 degree opposite of the truth.

The only formula that can be reverse engineered out of that is that the BBC will tell absolutely any lie, to promote absolutely any obscenity in the cause of statism/totalitarianism/fascism or the related Nazi cause. This in turn means that it is an organisation for which no person who is not a corrupt obscene lying whore could ever work. Granted this does go some way beyond what Brian admitted but it is the only thing that fits and Brian is certainly unconstrained by any ravages of honesty it still fits the information available and nothing else does.

By the legal definition of "obscenity" as something that "tends to deprave and corrupt" the BBC and everybody connected to are provably far and away the most obscene things in Britain. Indeed their level of obscenity cannot be less than that of those who were, rightly in my opinion, hung for participating in Auschwitz.. Of course those at Auschwitz ran the risk of being shot or sent to the Russian front (much the same thing) if they objected whereas all that would happen to the thieving parasites at the BBC if they did they same would be having to work for a living.

Nothing personal to anybody at the BBC - the rules of logic and mathematics are inexorable.

Thursday, August 08, 2013

ThinkScotland - Windmills 1,000 Times More Dangerous Than Nuclear

Latest article on ThinkScotland. It is an extension of my previous one comparing the real risk of low frequency sound from windmills with the, at best, evidence free claim of, risks from radiation from nuclear plants. please put any comments there:

"WE LIVE in the safest era of human history but our media are full of scare stories. Is this because when life is safe scary stuff fills a popular need – or is there more to it?

We are told there is a Precautionary Principle that must be invoked against any risk at all, but do its proponents really believe what they are saying?
I think there is something more because while it is true we get all these scare stories - global warming; WMDs in 45 minutes; obesity; passive smoking; margarine, butter and peak oil – there are other, at least equally probable scares that apparently don't sell papers.
A massive solar flare and global cooling are at least as fearsome as global warming and at least as credible. Fuel poverty is far more lethal than obesity. The MMR scare is at least as credible as the passive smoking one, though both strain credulity, but nobody pushing the latter has been debarred for not asking his research subjects permission properly (that, rather than any sort of fraud was what Wakefield was removed for).
So what makes a scare story the media will push or one they won't touch with a bargepole? The one thing all the disapproved ones have in common is they aren't government supported scares. Here is perhaps the ultimate comparison – Low frequency sound from Windmills......If the "Precautionary Principle" is to apply at all it must be applied against low frequency sound for which there has been, inexplicably if you believe research grants are given out purely for the science, far less research but for which there is actually infinitely more evidence of harm. We have had decades of funding of research trying to prove radiation harmful without any papers successfully doing so. Indeed there is at least one case – a herd of cattle being put to sleep 20 years after being exposed to radiation in 1945 – because their record breaking longevity threatened to discredit the theory that such radiation was dangerous.

You can make a scientific case that there is zero risk from radiation from nuclear power stations and a major risk from wind turbine low frequency sonics. You can, less credibly, make a case under the precautionary principle that both might be dangerous, but then you have to admit that the odds are a thousand times worse for the turbines. But you cannot honestly pretend that the anti-nuclear scare is genuine and the low frequency sound from windfarms isn't.

Except, of course, that that is exactly what the world's media have been pretending for decades - with the enthusiastic support of those in power.

If the "environmentalist" proponents of the precautionary principle actually believe in it they must, by definition, be campaigning 1,000 times harder for the closure of windfarms on safety grounds than for the closure of nuclear plants. In fact what we see is that the same politicians who push false scare fears about nuclear plants are deliberately finessing the rules to promote far more dangerous windmills.

Last month the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published a report by the Institute of Acoustics examining whether ETSU-R-97 was still adequate to the task. Remarkably, instead of stiffening regulations, it made them more lax, not only continuing to ignore the Low Frequency Noise and infrasound issue, but actually giving wind farms leeway to make more noise at night and to be built even closer to dwellings.
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Thus in a world where scare stories were merely the media satisfying a human yearning for horror stories broadcasters or newspapers must have spent thousands of times more promoting scare stories about windmills than nuclear plants.

But in a world where politicians pick and choose which scares are useful - "the practical purpose of politics is to keep the populace scared and eager to be led to safety by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" [Mencken] - and broadcasters and media find life more comfortable pushing the news they want, you would find the false, but more politically approved, scare stories being pushed and the real ones suppressed. Which appears to be what we do find.

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Unpublished Letters in July - Proof of Deliberate Censorship of 28 Gate; Evidencce of Censorship of UKIP

Some months ago I wrote of how I had sent out 756 letters mentioning the BBC's 28 Gate fraud and that5 every last one had been unpublished.. These bring it up another 108. to 864.

Not that far till we get to the magic 1,000 which, assuming my letters are even marginally literate, would clearly be a statistical impossibility if this were not deliberate censorship strongly enforced across the entire British MSM.

Most of these were also signed giving my UKIP link. I have had such letters published before and the statistical population is smaller, but it seems reasonable to believe, particularly in the Herald, there is extensive censorship here too.

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To the Scotsman:

Malcolm Kerr points out how much of Scotland's land is owned by very few people and concludes that all that is required is separation and this problem will go away. The solution is to introduce an element of Land Value Tax to the rating system which would mean there was a real cost to owning land and let the free market operate. This has always been within the remit of Holyrood and neither the SNP nor previous LabLib government did anything.

Other "levers of economic power" such as income tax, our more restrictive regulatory system, and the far higher level of government spending north of the border are also under Holyrood's control.

Proof, I think, that our problems are not caused by England but by our own established politicians who have been doing absolutely nothing, except banning things, for years. Why should we expect separation to magically awaken them.

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If there is to be discussion of the repetitiveness of "professional" letter writers may I mention Alex Orr who writes regularly, as a private person, to support the SNP & denigrate UKIP; support the EU; & support windmills. I'm not sure that he has outworn his welcome here but I certainly think that the fact that he runs a PR company paid by the SNP government; the EU and Renewables lobbyists, all out of taxpayer's money, should be mentioned when he is published.

The degree to which taxpayer money is used to fund almost every "charity" that promotes more government power,regulation and taxes is one of the major unreported scandals of our time, though there are others.

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Andrew Parrott's (letter Tues) suggested that the BBC invite the international OSCE to judge on whether they are actually maintaining the impartiality and "balance" specifically required under their Charter (the legal basis of the licence fee). Since the BBC are always eager to refer to OSCE judgements of the broadcasters in Russia and other places of which they do not approve, refusing to accept the same standards here seems hypocritical. With Alexander McKay's letter (Weds) simply asserting the BBC are wonderful I hope you will allow a contribution in support of what I believe to be a very good idea from Andrew, with which nobody wanting to find the truth should really disagree.

As someone who doubts that the promised catastrophic warming and massive sea level rise are actually happening I find the evidence of bias overwhelming. There is no dispute that for the last 7 years the BBC have justified their one sided reporting and censorship of dissidents on their claim to have run a symposium of "28 leading scientists" who unanimously said this was balanced. The organisation has stated this and indeed some employees have even testified under oath in a court case seeking the identity of these 28. In fact the 28 turned out all to be government funded activists, Greenpeace, or a psychological warfare expert from the US embassy. Only 2 were scientists, leading or otherwise.

As a member of UKIP I find the evidence beyond overwhelming. It requires only arithmetic to prove that with UKIP getting nearly 20% in the UK polls (23% in the recent council elections) & 8% in Scotland (4.8% in the Donside by election) our spokespersons do not get interviewed proportionately by either the UK or Scottish BBC. Indeed we are interviewed less often than the Greens (1% in Scottish polls & under across the UK). There is also the manner in which interviews are carried out such as the recent disgraceful one of Mr Farage just after he had been attacked by a fascist mob, in which they aped that mob's behaviour.

(When it wasn't published an amended version went out to 35 papers, none of whom published - another example of the virtually total censorship of the BBC's 28 Gate fraud by the rest of the press, even to the extent of censoring "reader's" letters and thus proof of how thorough censorship is)

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Andrew Parrott's suggestion that the BBC invite the international OSCE to judge on whether they are actually maintaining the impartiality and "balance" specifically required under their Charter (the legal basis of the licence fee) is a helpful contribution. Since the BBC are always eager to refer to OSCE judgements of the broadcasters in Russia and other places of which they do not approve, refusing to accept the same standards here seems hypocritical.

As someone who doubts that the promised catastrophic warming and massive sea level rise are actually happening I find the evidence of bias overwhelming. There is no dispute that for the last 7 years the BBC have justified their one sided reporting and censorship of dissidents on their claim to have run a symposium of "28 leading scientists" who unanimously said this was balanced. The organisation has stated this and indeed some employees have even testified under oath in a court case seeking the identity of these 28. In fact the 28 turned out all to be government funded activists, Greenpeace, or a psychological warfare expert from the US embassy. Only 2 were scientists, leading or otherwise.

As a member of UKIP I find the evidence beyond overwhelming. It requires only arithmetic to prove that with UKIP getting nearly 20% in the UK polls (23% in the recent council elections) & 8% in Scotland (4.8% in the Donside by election) our spokespersons do not get interviewed proportionately by either the UK or Scottish BBC. Indeed we are interviewed less often than the Greens (1% in Scottish polls & under across the UK). There is also the manner in which interviews are carried out such as the recent disgraceful one of Mr Farage just after he had been attacked by a fascist mob, in which they aped that mob's behaviour.

(another 28 Gate censorship)

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Clark Cross is correct to be dismissive of the anti-shale scaremongering by Friends of the Earth (letter Tues).

The basis fact is that most "environmental" charities, 90% of which, like FoE itself, are "charities" overwhelmingly funded by our government or the EU, is that they are much less concerned about the environment than about opposing human progress.

Thus we get an enormous, well funded, scare industry directed against anything that will grow our economy. Shale gas, is clearly less environmentally intrusive than conventional power sources like coal. Nuclear power is several 10s of times safer than other power (including windmills which have a bad but unreported accident record) and potentially by far the cheapest (at least 75% of the cost is government imposed rather than engineering). Both have been and are the targets of scare propaganda which, as Clark proves, cannot survive serious debate.

In general the state funded scaremongers are opposed to any new development but since energy has been and remains the main driver of growth, with a closer correlation than almost anything else in economics. Preventing us having cheap energy is their primary goal.

A goal in which these state funded scaremongers have been remarkably successful or we would not now be in recession while the rest of the world grows at 6% annually.

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I disagree with Steuart Campbell's assessment that catastrophic global warming is happening. We have had no warming for 18 years, substantially longer than the period of real warming used to promote the scare, and it is a matter of fact that current temperatures are considerably lower than they have been in the Middle Ages and the Climate Optimum (pre 5,000BC). That a large number of state funded "experts" promote the scare is less important than the fact that those scientists not so funded almost unanimously do not.

We also know, for a fact since the 28 gate scandal broke, that Britain's state broadcaster has knowingly lied for many years to promote the scare. This does not induce confidence in either the scare story or the BBC.

Steuart has laboured long and honourably in the cause of defusing similar scare stories about nuclear power, which, since it is the ultimate low carbon energy would have to be supported by anybody who believes CO2 is causing catastrophe. It is obvious that the overwhelming majority of climate alarmists are also opposed to nuclear. This is a touchstone of whether they actually believe their own scare story or are simply Luddites flying a false flag. A touchstone proving the overwhelming majority do not believe their own scare.

However I do agree with him that there are several geo-engineering solutions which would produce cooling at a small fraction of what the current "war against fire" is costing & which could be deployed relatively quickly. In particular stratospheric crystals, increase Earth's albedo would cost tens of millions rather than the current trillions. I would not suggest deploying any of them until damaging warming is proven because of the risk of cooling. That would be a genuine catastrophe.

Every one of our MSPs know there is a virtually 1:1 correlation between growth in energy use and gdp. And every one of them is committed to making energy ever scarcer and more expensive, deliberately putting 1 million Scots households into fuel poverty.

Energy prices could be reduced by at least 90% if the Luddites in charge were to permit it, which would get us out of recession - spectacularly. But only my party wishes to allow it. Something which, for unexplained reasons, our state broadcaster does not permit debate.

(another 28 gate mention censored)

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Glasgow Herald

If the Herald is actually interested in serious debate about the referendum you might consider actually publishing the letters from Scottish UKIP members since we are the only supporters of the union not also committed to the EU. Many of the most obvious arguments against separation relate to how the SNP would bring us into that "ever closer union" on any terms offered which would mean us losing the rebate; losing the immigration opt out from the Shengen agreement (& thus inevitably having border posts at Carlisle); losing the working opt outs which would cost us about 140,000 jobs; and having to promise to join the euro, but these go largely undiscussed because the debate is limited to those who believe that 75% of Scotland's laws should continue to be made in Brussels.

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I note Fergus Ewing has been writing to you to say what a wonderful asset it is to Scotland to have all this windmill power, intermittent though it is agreed to be, some of which we can sell abroad.

Would it be impertinent of me, not being of Mr Ewing's party, to ask why, if windmill power is so competitive, it is necessary to pour so many £10s of billions of taxpayer subsidy into it; why the Germans or anybody else will buy our power when there are far cheaper alternatives; whether the risk of it being cut off at any moment because the wind slackens is not going to be a problem for Germany?

Also whether he accepts that the correlation between energy and gdp is as close and well proven as anything in economics; and whether he accepts that the traditional parties, having deliberately raised electricity prices to at least 10 times what they should be, are wholly and solely responsible for the current recession which we could get out of very quickly if there were a technologically progressive party committed to reducing fuel poverty in government? Like....

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Caroline Carrick's letter today denouncing the government for not subsidising electric cars by quite as much as she wants makes its argument entirely on the congestion of the world's roads caused by cars. In what way do electric cars fail to take up road space? Can she come up with no argument for such enormous subsidy that actually involves an advantage that electric cars might have over the normal version? It seems not.
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If we are really putting CO2 into the atmosphere far faster than it can be absorbed (letter Saturday) we must have been doing so for millions of years, which seems unlikely. The government has publicly acknowledged that the human contribution to CO2 is only 3% of the total. There is an increase in CO2 but it is far more likely to be a natural process.

In any case CO2 is a fertiliser and 20% of the increase in world food supplies can be put down to the increase the scaremongers are so worried about. The rest is down to human invention - something which the pseudo-environmentalists clearly hate more than they love the environment.

If they did not hate human progress it would be impossible to explain how virtually every "Green" charity, 90% of which are funded by government, claim both to believe that CO2 is causing "catastrophic" warming, not visible to the rest of us, and to be against an expansion of nuclear power. this is the only practical system that can prevent blackouts, which the regulator says are fast approaching, with less CO2. I regard any "environmentalist's" views on nuclear as a touchstone of whether they actually believe in catastrophic warming or are using a false scare story to promote their real agenda - the end of human progress and endless recession. Something they are understandably unwilling to promote on its own merits, or otherwise. May I thank David Jardine (letter Monday) for his novel method of criticising my previous letter (Saturday). All he does is repeat what I said without making any attempt to provide counter evidence.

He does not dispute that Britain has 1300 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, holding far more energy than much more expensive North Sea gas.

He does not dispute that windmills, being entirely dependent on subsidy are hardly going to be a profit centre.

He does not deny that had the British government in the 1970s been of the ideological stripe of the current SNP, North Sea oil and gas would still be awaiting development and we would be hearing scare stories about how it produces earth tremors and can contaminate sea water (which it has to a larger extent than shale gas is expected to but not to an extent that is noticed without the most delicate measuring equipment). Indeed since a car driving by creates an "earthquake" of similar strength one assumes that had the SNP been around in the days of Victoria they would have been for banning anything more lively than the horse and cart.

There is no serious doubt that, if free market freedom were allowed in the energy market the technology exists for electricity prices to ultimately fall by as much as 90%. A million Scots households in fuel poverty, purely because of government policy is an obscenity. The correlation between increases in energy use and GNP is one of the clearest in all of economics, this means we could be out of recession any time our ruling parties (the SNP are not alone in their Luddism) wanted it.

If Mr Jardine or anybody else feels I am wrong in this they should actually say why. Scottish politics (& indeed the Scottish economy) is by far the poorer because in the cosy cartel of the established parties, no serious debate of such issues is allowed.

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To app 35 papers across the country:

Labour's .Jack McConnell has just been given a plum job by SSE managing a new multimillion-pound fund for communities living near wind farms which campaigners claim could threaten the integrity of the planning process.

This seems a strange, indeed counterproductive, choice for a post of political influence when it is now the SNP who are in power.

It is almost as if the entire democratic process in Holyrood is simply pantomime for the voters and behind the scenes they are united. United on it being nobody's fault that their Parliament building cost £430 million instead of £40 m; united on spending £2,300 million on the new Forth Bridge when the inflation adjusted cost of the old one was £320 m; united on having the world's most destructive "climate change" regulation and some of the most expensive electricity; united that the recession is all the fault of the bankers; and fuel poverty all the fault of the power companies.

No it can't be that. It must be that SSE were so impressed with Lord McConnell's previous career as a schoolteacher in Alloa. Good news for teachers facing retirement everywhere then.

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Fewer than half of us think BBC news coverage is reliable. The amazing thing is that close to half don't.

The BBC make no attempt to live up to their legal duty, legally enshrined in their Charter, of "balance", knowing that the state is hardly inclined to enforce the law.

On issue after issue coverage is obviously slanted and dissenting views simply censored. When did we last see serious airtime given to those who oppose unlimited immigration; gay "marriage"; bombing small countries or support proportional elections; the death penalty or cutting the size of the state?

The "catastrophic global warming" scare is an obvious but by no means extreme example of any sort of dissent being simply censored. BBC representatives claimed, for years on end, even under oath in court, that they had the support of a symposium of 28 of the world's leading scientists for uppressing any body who expressed doubt of catastrophic global warming. When the list came out , reported extensively online under the title 28 gate, it was proven that this was actually 28 government funded activists with only 2 who could be called scientists. For obvious reasons they continue to censor any mention of this.

On party politics the BBC is similarly reminiscent of Orwell's Ministry of Truth - Orwell having worked there .before writing 1984. The BBC give 10 times as much coverage to the Greens (under 1% in polls) as they do to UKIP (22%). This would be unarguable proof of 99.54% censorship if, when they were reported UKIP and the Greens were treated equally but anybody watching each will have seen supportively the Greens are always treated. And how UKIP aren't.

The BBC have repeatedly described Russia as not being a real democracy because their broadcasters are partly state owned and biased despite their being strict laws (which unlike the BBC charter, are enforced) requiring 21 hours of coverage at elections for even small parties. By their own words the BBC thereby condemn themselves as the enemy of democracy and freedom in Britain.

(another 28 gate censorship)

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Recently the prime minister, after some months of swithering but under the pressure of seeing UKIP coming close to matching his party's support (23% UKIP, 25% Tory at the recent council elections) appeared to make the "concession" that he would allow the British people a referendum on EU membership - in the next parliament in the unlikely position of him being in power with a majority.

Even this, Cameron's second promise of a referendum has already been proven false. The Previous one being what he called a "cast iron" promise of a referendum over the Lisbon Treaty.

He has no intention of honouring an out vote in the unlikely event one occurs. In an interview with the Spanish El Pais he said “The best solution for the UK is to stay in a reformed EU”

He was asked the following (via Google translate): In case of a Yes victory in the referendum that you will organize on leaving the EU, would you be willing to withdraw from the Union?

And Cameron’s response:

"I would not." (No me gustaría)

That Cameron makes such an admission – of wilfully ignoring a referendum vote – in a foreign newspaper is revealing. Truly he’s the child of Europe, his hero evidently instead is Barroso (EU Commission President) who said of the Irish“They must go on voting until they get it right.”

Tuesday, August 06, 2013

Evolution in Action - Milk Drinking Mutants Conquering the Earth

I got this Nature article on lactose intolerance via Steve Sailer. Worldmap (well excluding the America's whose population is rather new)(and I'm not convinced by the Australian and New Zealand maps - if they are of the current population they should have British Isles tolerances and if they are off the natives Tasmania should be blank cause we wiped them all out)(back to the show)

Amazingly the estimate, from the degree of variation in DNA, is that this happened 7,500 years ago (5,500 BC) in Hungary. This isn't long before the earliest recorded history yet it has been enough to repopulate Europe (not to mention America and Australasia) at least of this gene.

The other areas of lactose tolerance, the western Sahara, Saudi Arabia and coastal Pakistan are said to be caused by different mutations. I assume the numbers in Sahara and Saudi are very small (perhaps the Saudi and Pakistani variants are the same gene since they are close to each other). Why didn't they grow so much - perhaps because northern Europe is ideal dairy farming country. It is implied the others are older mutations so perhaps they had some side effect.

However the fact that such a favourable mutation happened, or survived, only 4 times since agriculture started 11,000 years ago shows how difficult the initial mutations are. And the fact that it has spread so far in such a short, in normal evolutionary terms, shows how easy it is when the conditions are right.

Monday, August 05, 2013

The Commonwealth

The Commonwealth is set to overtake the Eurozone to become the largest GDP area in the world. Furthermore, the Commonwealth is predicted to have a growth rate of 7.3% between 2013 and 2017, three times faster than the Eurozone. The Commonwealth has 20% of global trade and just over 30% of the world’s population.Five of the Commonwealth nations – Singapore, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, are ranked in the top ten countries worldwide for doing business (2010) and are classified in the Very High Human Development Group

That makes it significantly larger than the USA too. Granted not as united but as I have previously said of the USA, being united may not, in present economic circumstances, be a good thing.

I have suggested that confederation, i.e. sovereign states deliberately pooling some of that sovereignty for defence and free trade is the optimum choice. Machiavelli described such confederation of 12-14 members as the 2nd best option but his "best" was one strong power with allies and auxiliaries (he meant the early Roman Empire) because confederations (ie Switzerland) could not come under the strong leadership to go out and conquer new territory. I would agree with Machiavelli about the effect but would disagree that such ability to conquer is an improvement.

Actually I think I could make a good case that if Italy and the Mediterranean world had never become united as one Empire, they wouldn't have eventually collapsed to the assorted Huns, goths and vandal tribes.

The Commonwealth is not as united as such a confederation. Nor is it likely that we would get that unified. On the other hand some movement, such as free trade area status, a certain amount of internal consultation on defence and foreign affairs, mediation between members (like India & Pakistan) and some other things which I will get by too, are practical. And desirable so long as the aim is to talk together rather than any pressured union.

Sunday, August 04, 2013

Recent Comments

“Fracking was temporarily halted and has yet to resume anywhere in the UK.”

Now how could that be when politicians of all the approved parties now say they are in favour of it and the ban ended nearly a year ago. Because as soon as the ban was lifted a new ban was reimposed on this site on the grounds that it is about 10 miles from a bird sanctuary.

So all the politicians can get on with their Luddite promotion of recession while pretending to be supporting progress.

even before we get to hydrates, is oil manufactured by modified algae. Since it needs only sun and fertile water, like sea water, that is a renewable resource. Nuclear and solar power satellites are also good for the lifetime of the Sun.
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Now on this thread about Murdoch on Channel 4 I left a comment that the whole anti-Murdoch campaign run by the state owned broadcasters because they knew he was preparing to turn Sky into a real competitor. I pointed out that this was obviously true because the coverage was so much greater on the state owned media than elsewhere and the apologies for lies (like when they claimed Milly's emails had been deleted by the NOTW, now admitted to have been an "accidental" lie) so much more muted.

The reason Salmond won't even look towards the Catalans is he fears Spain would then veto Scottish membership of the EU. He has put his whole credibility (!) on persuading us that being in the EU is the safe option that makes independence not a real leap in the dark.

Thus in many ways UKIP's claim to be in favour of independence is far deeper than the SNP's who are so scared of it they beg to be in the "ever closer union" of Brussels.
Calling the SNP centrist is misleading. They are committed to socialism & if you ever meet any activist you will find they, mostly, consider independence as a stepping stone to the glorious worker's revolution. On what few of them conceive as the other hand, they are also committed to the most reactionary and silly anti-progress policy - going 100% for windmillery by 2020 (& thus 99% lights out for winter 2020). Technically mixing the most looney leftism with the most looney reaction does average the centre ground, but it doesn't occupy it.
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The dirty secret of Britain's power madness: Polluting diesel generators built in secret by foreign companies to kick in when there's no wind for turbines - and other insane but true eco-scandals

“country where you can express disagreements with government, campaign to change government policies, and vote to change the politicians if all else fails”

These are different things and parliamentary democracy can exist without disagreements being allowed to be aired – though of the 2 I would go for free speech.

How do we fit on these tests. I suggest C-

We are technically allowed free speech but speech alone can reach only a miniscule part of the population. Far and away the most important communications medium is broadcasting and in Britain there is a government owned monopoly (monopoly being defined as 70% plus) which specifically censors anybody unapproved. Moreover it not only censors any dissidents on government approved scare stories it has been proven willing to tell any lie whatsoever on the warming scare and presumably anything else. (more extreme allegation v. BBC deleted ed) Until such time as the government owned media is willing to regularly allow genuine formal debate (ie with more than 1 side represented) on the full range of political issues we will not be a country where you can effectively express disagreement with government.

Over the last couple of decades we have seen that “campaigns to change government policy”, or at least those reported by the BBC & other media, are invariably government funded sock puppets, simply campaigning for more government power, usually using some false scare story. In a manner incompatible with journalistic honesty, the media virtually always conceal the fact that these are simply government fronts. In total these campaigns cost the British taxpayer about £50 bn a year but most people know nothing about it. For example I have yet to find a single global warming alarmist appearing in the comments sections of blogs and papers who can be identified as not being a government funded propagandist.

On the 3rd point I notice you said turfing the rascals (yourself excluded) out was an “if all else fails” option. It should be a common occurance. The problem here is that we have an openly corrupt electoral system which disenfranchises dissidents and produces results with no more than a nodding acquaintance with how people vote. This system is maintained by the ruling class precisely because they depend on its corruption.

On each of these Britain falls far short of being a free democracy and consequently of being a competently run country. Taken together …….